presents
Dr. John Andrews
OSHO Dynamic Meditation- – A Closer Look – First Stage
Hello everybody
We are going to go through
Osho Dynamic Meditation.
And I am not going to be focusing on all
the regular instructions.
We will mention everything
but particularly we want to look at
the areas that are quite complicated,
quite difficult
or easy to misunderstand
or don’t get presented very well –
so that you really benefit
from this meditation.
So when you hear the instructions:
let’s say you hear the instructions
which begin with
“this is a meditation in which you
have to be continuously conscious,
alert and aware in all the
three stages. And then you hear
something about the breathing
which is quite complicated
and not like any breathing
that people regularly do at all.
Then you hear there is 10 minutes
of going completely crazy
which definitely gets your attention.
And then there is 10 minutes
of jumping up and down
on the flats of your feet
with your hands in the air,
again a pretty unusual maneuver
and then there is a freeze
and then there is 15 minutes of
just standing frozen
and then there is 15 minutes of
dance and celebration.
And when you hear all that,
one thing which is pretty likely
is whatever that conscious,
alert and aware business was
right at the beginning
has long gone out of the window.
So I just want you to listen to
Osho explaining
that particular part.
“So this first meditation
is a meditation
in which you have to be
continuously alert, conscious,
aware,
whatsoever you do.
The first
step, breathing;
the second step, catharsis;
the third step,
the mantra, mahamantra “Hoo.”
But remain a witness.
Don’t get lost.
It is easy to get lost.
While you are breathing
you can forget;
you can become so much one
with breathing that
you can forget the witness.
But then you miss the point.
Breathe as fast,
as deep as possible,
bring your total energy to it,
but you still remain a witness.
Observe it what is happening
as if you are just a spectator,
as if the whole thing is
happening to somebody else,
as if the whole thing is happening
in the body
and the consciousness is just
centered and looking.
This witnessing has to be carried
in all the three steps.
And when everything stops,
and in the fourth step
you have become
completely inactive,
frozen,
then this alertness
will come to its peak.
Osho, A Bird on the Wing, # 1
So the key phrase there is
“but then you miss the point”.
So this is like
the basis
of this whole meditation.
The second difficulty often
is the breathing.
Now, the breathing can be
regular
or the breathing could be
regularly irregular
or it could be
irregularly irregular
which is exactly what is
required for this first 10 minutes.
Absolutely irregularly irregular
without any rhythm
or pattern at all.
And that is absolutely crucial.
And we will explain
the details of
that in a minute.
Now let’s just say
it is tomorrow morning.
It is 6 o’clock
and there you are.
It’s a little early,
it’s dark.
You are a bit woozy,
and you are waiting there
and then the music starts
off you go breathing away,
breathing away
and then suddenly you remember
“jeez, what did that guy say?
Oh irregularly irregular,
right ok”
and then you start remembering
and you breath irregularly,
irregularly which you manage
to keep up for
a full 10 seconds
before you fall back
into a coma
and now you are
breathing totally regularly
again like a steam engine.
That is quite tricky.
Now when you ask yourself
“how on earth am I going to be
able to breathe irregularly irregularly
for 10 whole minutes?”
Only one possible way
and that is to be conscious,
alert and aware.
Both of these issues
absolutely fit together.
You cannot have one
without the other.
And Osho explains
about these active meditations
that they are like
changing gear in a car.
You go to the max
in the first gear and then
the second gear
and then the third gear.
Each stage or stages depends
on the stage or stages
that went before.
So everything depends
on this first 10 minutes.
And you can see,
when it says irregularly irregularly
the word everybody hears is chaotic.
Now chaotic does not translate
in many languages
exactly as irregularly irregularly.
You can stand in front of the mirror
and you can breathe
irregularly irregularly
and it may not look very
chaotic at all.
And conversely,
you can stand in front of the mirror
and give a very chaotic performance
and actually you are
breathing regularly.
So if you are breathing
irregularly irregularly
that means the breathing
is as chaotic as possible.
So the rest of the chaos
comes from the
natural body movements.
Use your body to generate
the maximum amount of chaos.
That is what the irregularly irregularly
breathing is intended to do.
So let us look at what this
is all about.
Why is this important?
What is going on?
So you may have noticed
that when you get into a stage
you get angry,
you get upset,
you get miserable,
you get delighted,
you get excited –
whatever it is –
you may have noticed
that your breathing
takes on a particular pattern
for you for that particular state.
And that is an indication
of the extent to which
the mind and the breathing
are habitually locked together
essentially because of our
conditioning. Locked together.
So if we take the mind
sort of figuratively like that,
then everyone seems to agree
that about 10 % of the mind
is the so called conscious mind
and 90 % is unconscious.
And you can think of the
conscious mind
as being filled with all the things
your mum and dad hoped that the
neighbors thought was true
about you.
All the things that you are
proud of and you are happy about
and you want everyone to think is
true about you
and all those wonderful thinks
about you.
That gets left
in the conscious mind.
But what about all the other stuff?
The naughty stuff,
the bad stuff,
the stuff you are ashamed about,
the stuff you definitely don’t want
the neighbors to find out about?
All that kind of stuff
you are guilty about,
all the stuff you have forgotten,
neglected, ignored?
All that gets put in
the unconscious.
So, there is a barrier between
the conscious and the unconscious
which makes the unconscious
unconscious,
invisible,
unless we discover how
to go there and find out
what is there.
Normally it is there is a wall
between the two.
Like a Berlin wall.
which is very compassionate
because when someone says
“how are you today”
and you kind of go “I’m fine thanks…
kind of”
it is sort of genuine because
actually we haven’t a clue
what is in the unconscious.
If we really knew
what is in the unconscious
and someone says
“how are you today”,
the answer would be very different.
Now
what is really interesting about this
is the unconscious
actually gets a very bad rap.
When you think of it
the unconscious
takes care of your breathing,
your heart rate,
your digestion, your immunity,
you know some pretty important
issues - almost like the best friend
you ever had.
And the reason the unconscious
gets a bad rap is because it is
in the “left luggage” business.
Because the conscious mind,
whenever it comes across something
it really does not want to deal with
and does not want to look at
and is embarrassed about
and ashamed about,
dumps it into the unconscious.
But what is really important to
understand is the unconscious
has no interest in keeping
all this stuff down here.
Also you can look at the unconscious
like a really bright 12 year old kid
who’s only job is to take care of you
and all your vital functions.
And the unconscious has no context.
It does not know the world it is in.
All it knows is whatever it gets
from the conscious mind.
So, here is the unconscious going
“jeez, what the hell is this doing here,
right in the middle of the corridor
blocking all the flow?
Well I guess she knows
what she is doing and my job
is just to take care of it”.
But what is really critical
is this unconscious mind
has no interest
in keeping this here at all.
This unconscious mind
would love to get rid of it.
And the reason it stays down there
is because of the energy of this guy
in the conscious mind
who definitely does not want any of
that stuff coming to the surface
because I like to pretend to everyone
that I am completely normal
and a nice happy chap,
right and I don’t want any of
that stuff coming to the surface
so I exert a lot of effort,
my whole life trying to make sure
that none of that nasty stuff comes
to the light of day.
Huge effort, effort, effort, a pretense.
Pretending that we are normal
and everything is fine thank you.
So, given the extent that the mind
and the breathing are so
habitually tied together.
If we could cause enough chaos
in the body and the breathing
what happens is this guy
completely loses the plot.
So this guy who is being busy
all the time pretending how normal
you are actually then is no longer
able to keep up the job,
completely loses it,
does not know if it is
Monday or Friday,
can no longer guard the Berlin wall,
at which point whatever is
in the unconscious can now simply
come to the surface.
Just as the unconscious would love
to see it all go,
he is happy that it is all disappearing,
he does not want it there,
this guy is no longer able to hold
it down so naturally whatever is there
can now come to the surface.
That is why that first 10 minutes
is so critical as a doorway
to the second 10 minutes,
the catharsis.
You get that breathing to be
as deep and as fast and is
as irregularly irregularly as you
possibly can using your body
movements to support every
possible amount of chaos,
what you are doing is
getting rid of this guy so that
whatever is in the unconscious
can now happily come to the surface
during the second stage.
O.K? Clear? Interesting eh?
So now we will just play
a demonstration of the first stage
with the basic instructions.
The First stage: 10 minutes
Breathing chaotically through
the nose, let breathing be intense,
deep, fast, without rhythm,
with no pattern – and concentrating
always on the exhalation.
The body will take care of the
inhalation.
The breath should move deeply
into the lungs.
Do this as fast and as hard as you
possibly can until you literally
become the breathing.
Use your natural body movements
to help you to build up your energy.
Feel it building up, but
don’t let go during the first stage.
Did anyone notice an apparent
contradiction between
what Osho is saying
and the instructions?
So the instructions say you
“breathe as deep, as fast so you
literally become one with
the breathing”
and Osho is saying
“you can become one with the
breathing so much that you
can forget the witness”.
Tricky.
So you really have to turn up for
this meditation and there
are lots of tricky elements to it.
The Second Stage Continues
For more information including details of webinars on meditation and other OSHO-related topics, please contact: johnandrews@osho.com
John Andrews was Osho's personal physician, taking care of his body for many years including his final days.
As a meditator and scientist for many decade, John Andrews enjoyed following, and writing about, the gradual acceptance of meditation by the scientific community turn into the current flood of interest.
He now writes about the final step into an individual journey without end.
As Osho explains, it is "an open experiment", where, "Any truth that may come later on can be absorbed by this system without any conflict".
Now we can move easily from what is often confusing plethora of different approaches to the simple, clear and practical approach to meditation by Osho -
the first major upgrade in discovering how to be conscious in twenty-five centuries !
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